Mark Cuban Quotations

It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers' shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship.

What I’ve learned is that if you really want to be successful at something, you’ll find that you put the time in. You won’t just ask somebody if it’s a good idea, you’ll go figure out if it’s a good idea.

I still work hard to know my business. I'm continuously looking for ways to improve all my companies, and I'm always selling. Always.

I'm not the type to pat myself on the back and all that, but somebody has to be lucky, right? When I got to Dallas, I was struggling - sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there and use that as motivation.

We can't ever forget that the Internet now is just a staid utility. The exciting platforms are software applications that are very, very simple.

Being rich is a good thing. Not just in the obvious sense of benefitting you and your family, but in the broader sense. Profits are not a zero sum game. The more you make, the more of a financial impact you can have.

Social media is just a platform. Twitter is a very simple and immediate broadcast platform. Facebook is a very personal, when it comes to friends and when it comes to fan pages, a little bit less but still somewhat personal way to communicate.

Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write.

What I’ve learned in these 11 years is you just got to stay focused and believe in yourself and trust your own ability and judgment.

I don't care what anyone says. Being rich is a good thing.

I love to compete. To me, business is the ultimate sport. It's always on. There is always someone trying to beat me.

I look at my annual budgets for everything and anything, and I look to see where I can save the most money on those items. Saving 30% to 50% buying in bulk - replenishable items from toothpaste to soup, or whatever I use a lot of - is the best guaranteed return on investment you can get anywhere.

If you think back to the first sporting event you went to, you don't remember the score, you don't remember a home run, you don't remember a dunk. You remember who you were with. Were you with your mom, your dad, your brother, on a date?

In my opinion, right now there's way too much hype on the technologies and not enough attention to the real businesses behind them.

In these times of the 'Great Recession', we shouldn't be trying to shift the benefits of wealth behind some curtain. We should be celebrating and encouraging people to make as much money as they can. Profits equal tax money. While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes, I don't. I find it patriotic.

I worked hard and smarter than most people in the businesses I have been in.

Because if you're prepared and you know what it takes, it's not a risk. You just have to figure out how to get there. There is always a way to get there.

I'm not against government involvement in times of need. I am for recognizing that big public companies will continue to cut jobs in an effort to prop up stock prices, which in turn stimulates the need for more government involvement.

Culture is very important to the Mavs. Your best player has to be a fit for what you want the culture of the team to be. He has to be someone who leads by example. Someone who sets the tone in the locker room and on the court. It isn't about who talks the most or the loudest. It is about the demeanor and attitude he brings.

But we have to ask ourselves, what's the purpose of the stock market? It's supposed to be a source of capital for growing business. It's lost that purpose.

You've got to be very cognizant of the correlation between social media links and business because they don't always correlate as highly as people would like.

I think political people are afraid of me.

When I got to the Mavericks people were all giving me advice - change this, change that - and one thing that I didn't do was fire anybody.

Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is. Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world. Love what you do or don't do it.

Money is a scoreboard where you can rank how you're doing against other people.

Wherever I see people doing something the way it's always been done, the way it's 'supposed' to be done, following the same old trends, well, that's just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.

The number-one job of the hedge-fund manager is not to make sure that you can retire with a smile on your face - it's for him to retire with a smile on his face.

I hate politics. It's slimy. Any job where people pander for votes, I don't like. The country has gotten so partisan that if you're not on my side, you're the enemy. The only thing I ever try to support is a third party, like Unity08. We need more parties and more choice.

The key is having great players. But there are a lot of teams that have All-Stars and haven't been able to put it together.

I create offbeat advice; I don't follow it. I rarely take third-party advice on my investments.

When you turn your team upside down and try to figure out what the culture of the team is, you take the greatest risk a team can take.

Recessions are the best time to start a company. Companies fail. Others hold back capital. If you are willing to do the preparation and work, it is the best time to invest in yourself and start a business.

I've learned the number one job of a pro manager is not to win championships but to keep their job.

In the past, people used to tell me to shut up a bit. But what I believe is to put out your opinion and let everyone else react. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

I think that any reporter or columnist will be a little more careful when doing interviews with me.

I don't think there's any question that the UFL or any other league that wants to challenge the NFL can have an impact. The demand for professional football is off the charts.

What I do know, at least what I think I have learned from my experiences in business, is that when there is a rush for everyone to do the same thing, it becomes more difficult to do. Not easier. Harder.

Make sure you are the boss. I don't think I would encourage executives that work for me to blog. There can be only 1 public vision for an organization.

The first cities to create friction-free enterprise zones will get a lot of entrepreneurial traction.

Being able to take a traditional cable-television subscriber and give them new widget type applications to me is huge.

If there was a template for success in sports, everyone would follow it. You do the best you can and trust the people you trust.

I wish Donald nothing but the best for Apprentice 2 and I hope it does just as well as his casinos do. You don't come after dogs, you don't come after kids and you don't come after The Hair.

One of the best classes I ever took was entrepreneurship in my freshman year at Indiana University. It really motivated me. There is much more to starting a business than just understanding finance, accounting, and marketing. Teaching kids what has worked with startup companies and learning about experiences that others have had could really make a difference. I know it did for me.

Kobe is a top-five player, and he proved it yesterday. I've watched Dirk, McGrady and other superstars take over games. When it happens it's amazing to watch.

He is our coach. He has nothing in common with anyone who has or will ever be considered interim.

For whatever reason, I have gotten to Phil so completely and thoroughly that every time he comes to Dallas he has to offer unsolicited comments about me to the media. I wonder if he dreams about me the nights he spends here in Dallas.

I do not see how this transaction could benefit anyone other than the current management who must be expecting to feather their own nests, ... The $200 million offering price does not come close to fairly valuing the business of this company.

I have always been interested in innovative and cutting edge-technologies coupled with a large market opportunity.

He is creating a situation that doesn't exist. Maybe he should request that the league release results of officials' performance evaluations so fans, players and owners can see how wonderful a job they actually do. The officials do a good job overall. This would be his opportunity to confirm it to all.

He said he would call back the next day. He never did. So we dropped the idea.

Just the process of exploring the options has been very difficult.

I saw him at the All-Star game. He said he's ready to go.

Jeff is your typical eccentric genius. He locks himself away for months at a time with no human contact just to come up with great formulas for evaluating sports. It's fun to work with him, and his stuff is amazing.

Johnson's response then: ??I don't know, I don't know.

I think one of the biggest curses in the U.S. is that we have only two political parties.

I wish Mike all the best off the court, ... As always, I hope the Spurs lose 82 games.

I wonder if he dreams about me the nights he spends here in Dallas. OK, I don't wonder. I'm curious about it. Of course, I don't truly believe that I own Phil. But that won't prevent me from walking up to him and say 'Boo' to see if he jumps, just to find out for sure.

We have told the NBA we are happy to help in any way.

You don't do that. We love the Cowboys.

Why would we do anything? What do we need?

That was the worst half of officiating I've ever seen. That was terrible, and I want it on the record I said that at halftime, no matter what the outcome.

It takes a lot of things to work together in order to be wealthy but with a little luck, a lot of luck... You've got to be good at something. For a 20-year-old, you don't have to know exactly what you want to do, you've just got to go find something you can be great at, and then go be great at it.

I think college is an absolute. In this world you have to learn how to learn and get in the habit of always wanting to learn. Some kids have that out of high school and may be able to do the college equivalent of home schooling. Most kids can't. So I highly recommend going to college.

Kids should go to college, but they should go to the best school they can afford to get through with minimal or no debt. That might mean going to a community college or an inexpensive local state school. Whatever it takes.

As processor speeds and shared processors create cheap unlimited processing power we will be able to turn our bodies into a math equation that can be crossed against the properties of medicine and nature to create medicine unique to each individual.

Brains are far more important than money or connections. Everyone and anyone can create a business out of their bedroom.

I'm the one guy who says don't force the stupid people to be quiet - I want to know who the morons are.

Pay off your debt first. Freedom from debt is worth more than any amount you can earn.

It takes time, it's a grind. There are no shortcuts. You've got to grind and grind.

Do the work. Out-work. Out-think. Out-sell your expectations. There are no shortcuts.

Every now and then I love to invest in a company that may not set the world on fire, but has the chance to establish itself, create jobs and have a positive impact.

Sometimes you buy the horse, sometimes you invest in the jockey. It really comes down to the actual business and the upside.

When you've got 10,000 people trying to do the same thing, why would you want to be number 10,001?

It comes down to finding something you love to do and then just trying to be great at it

Doesnt matter what your skill and physical gifts are if you cant get your head right.

All you need is a laptop or a PC and an Internet connection and you can pretty much do almost anything and create almost any type of company.

Work like there is someone working twenty-four hours a day to take it all away from you.

Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

Video for the Internet has become a testing ground for mediums that actually have revenue.

Creating opportunities means looking where others are not.

I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I wake up every day just fired up. My one rule is, don't let anyone pinch me, because I don't want to wake up.

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is that we lie to ourselves. We don't step back and look at ourselves like a competitor would.

On the Internet, there are an unlimited number of competitors. Anybody with a Flip camera is your competition. What makes it even worse is that YouTube is willing to subsidize the cost of your bandwidth. So anybody can create and distribute for free basically, but the real cost is marketing. And that's always the big cost - how do you stand out and what's the cost of standing out? And there's no limit to that cost.

Get me selling and I can figure out the industry. Once I can figure out the industry I can start a business in that industry.

Perfectionism is the enemy of profitability.

I was lucky. I grew up knowing that hard work and smart work has a greater impact on results than being passionate about something.

Every 'No' gets me closer to a 'Yes'.

The policies and actions of Senator Hatch are very concerning to me from what I read and from my personal interactions with him,

We want to learn as the technology evolves, ... We felt that by going out and getting content, building the infrastructure, we could start exposing people to the technology, start building our audience and our revenue streams.

We saw it and are on it. We will send it into the league and I'm sure he will be suspended.

We're rocking the film festival. If you've seen a movie, you've seen one of ours,

There is no question he has accepted the role and is trying to have as big an impact on every game as he possibly can. As he gets more and more comfortable with it, I think his -- and the team's -- play on offense will continue to improve.

Once you have found out what you love to do, there is only one goal: to be the best in the world at it.

Everyone tells you how they are going to be "special", but few do the work to get there. Do the work.

YouTube has gotten so big that you're not a standard unless YouTube adopts you. And that's a big fight.

With every effort, I learned a lot. With every mistake and failure, not only mine, but of those around me, I learned what not to do. I also got to study the success of those I did business with as well. I had more than a healthy dose of fear, and an unlimited amount of hope, and more importantly, no limit on time and effort.

There are no shortcuts. You have to work hard, and try to put yourself in a position where if luck strikes, you can see the opportunity and take advantage of it.

The same applies to the music and film industries. Until the heads of the labels start wanting to make money rather than creating controversy, tension, and excuses about why piracy is making the job so hard that no one could do it but them - and oh by the way, they need a raise to really focus in on the fight - the music industry is going to have a very tough time of it.

Sweat equity is the best startup capital.

The NBA (National Basketball Association) is never just a business. It's always business. It's always personal. All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal.